Able Quotes - Page 30

• Attention spans are changing. It's very noticeable. I am very aware that the kind of books I read in my childhood kids now won't be able to read. I was reading Kipling and PG Wodehouse and Shakespeare at the age of 11. The kind of description and detail I read I would not put in my books. I don't know how much you can fight that because you want children to read. So I pack in excitement and plot and illustrations and have a cliffhanger every chapter. Charles Dickens was doing cliffhangers way back when. But even with all the excitement you have to make children care about the characters.

  Cressida Cowell

  Children, Book, Reading

  8 Copy quote

• However small we are, we should always fight for what we believe to be right. And I don’t mean fight with the power of our fists or the power of our swords…I mean the power of our brains and our thoughts and our dreams. And as small and quiet and unimportant as our fighting may look, perhaps we might all work together…and break out of the prisons of our own making. Perhaps we might be able to keep this fierce and beautiful world of ours as free for all of us as it seemed to be on that blue afternoon of my childhood.

  Cressida Cowell

  Beautiful, Dream, Believe

  "How To Train Your Dragon: How To Speak Dragonese". Book by Cressida Cowell, 2017.

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• When I look at the way I was able to play in my 17th year, I feel like I earned the right to play in the NFL for another one.

  Charles Woodson

  Years, Play, Nfl

  8 Copy quote

• I like to be aware of a book as a piece of writing, and aware of its structure as a product of mind, and yet I want to be able to see the represented world through it. I admire artists who succeed in dividing my attention more or less evenly between the world of their books and the art of their books . . . so that a reader may study the work with pleasure as well as the world that it describes.

  Annie Dillard

  Art, Book, Writing

  4 Copy quote

• Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than a moving plane, ship or train. There is an almost quaint correlation between what is in front of our eyes and the thoughts we are able to have in our heads: large thoughts at times requiring large views, new thoughts new places. Introspective reflections which are liable to stall are helped along by the flow of the landscape. The mind may be reluctant to think properly when thinking is all it is supposed to do.

  Alain de Botton

  Moving, Eye, Reflection

  Alain de Botton (2003). “The Art of Travel”, p.32, Penguin UK

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Only in Jesus are we able to pray, and with Him we also know that we shall be heard.

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer

  Jesus, Praying, Heard

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Eberhard Bethge (1974). “Psalms: The Prayer Book of the Bible”, p.11, Augsburg Books

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Anybody who ever built an empire, or changed the world, sat where you are now. And it's *because* they sat there that they were able to do it.

  Ryan Bingham

  Up In The Air, World, Empires

  12 Copy quote

• If an individual is able to love productively, he loves himself, too; if he can love only others, he cannot love at all.

  Erich Fromm

  Individual, Ifs

  Erich Fromm (2014). “The Erich Fromm Reader: Readings Selected and Edited by Rainer Funk”, p.105, Open Road Media

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• I feel so sorry for younger actors who aren't able to have the opportunities that I had, starting out in repertory theatre. It's really tough on young actors now.

  Antony Sher

  Sorry, Opportunity, Theatre

  "Antony Sher, actor - portrait of the artist". Interview with Laura Barnett, www.theguardian.com. February 12, 2013.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• God judges men from the inside out; men judge men from the outside in. Perhaps to God, an extreme mental patient is doing quite well in going a month without murder, for he fought his chemical imbalance and succeeded; oppositely, perhaps the healthy, able and stable man who has never murdered in his life yet went a lifetime consciously, willingly never loving anyone but himself may then be subject to harsher judgment than the extreme mental patient. It might be so that God will stand for the weak and question the strong.

  Criss Jami

  Strong, Men, Judging

  Criss Jami (2016). “Healology”, p.39, Criss Jami

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Maturity is when you're able to say, 'It's not just them. It's me.'

  Criss Jami

  Maturity

  Criss Jami (2016). “Healology”, p.46, Criss Jami

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• The purpose of civilization and growth is to be able to reach out and empathize with other people... For me, the movies are like a machine that generates empathy.

  Roger Ebert

  Civilization, People, Empathy

  7 Copy quote

• You will never be able to measure your influence for good.

  Thomas S. Monson

  Influence

  8 Copy quote

• You have to have short-term memory. You have to be able to move on to the next practice, the next game, turn the page and keep your emotions so you make the decisions that are best for your group.

  Randy Carlyle

  Memories, Moving, Practice

  4 Copy quote

• Our world cannot be complete without you, and without hearing what you have to say. True justice cannot exist without compassion; compassion cannot exist without understanding. But no one will understand you unless you speak, and are able to speak clearly (Sister Janet to the students, page 155).

  Mark Salzman

  Compassion, Our World, Justice

  Mark Salzman (2007). “True Notebooks: A Writer's Year at Juvenile Hall”, p.155, Vintage

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• The sounds of many were unintelligible and undoubtedly many more called for their parents from whom they were parted by death or by accident. They grasped their tortured limbs, their tiny burning legs until they were no longer able to stand or run. And then they would crash to the ground where they would writhe in the bubbling tar until death released them from their physical misery.

  Martin Caidin

  Running, Parent, Sound

  5 Copy quote

• In order to be able thus to misjudge, and thus to grant left-handed veneration to our classics, people must have ceased to know them. This, generally speaking, is precisely what has happened. For, otherwise, one ought to know that there is only one way of honoring them, and that is to continue seeking with the same spirit and with the same courage, and not to weary of the search.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Order, People, Way

  Friedrich Nietzsche “Delphi Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche (Illustrated): Friedrich Nietzsche”, Delphi Classics

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• How can a man know himself? He is a thing dark and veiled; and if the hare has seven skins, man can slough off seventy times seven and still not be able to say: "this is really you, this is no longer outer shell.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Dark, Men, Skins

  Friedrich Nietzsche (1997). “Nietzsche: Untimely Meditations”, p.179, Cambridge University Press

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Art furnishes us with eyes and hands and above all the good conscience to be able to turn ourselves into such a phenomenon.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Art, Eye, Hands

  Friedrich Nietzsche (2010). “The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs”, p.164, Vintage

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• All birth means separation from the All, the confinement within limitation, the separation from God, the pangs of being born ever anew. The return into the All, the dissolution of painful individuation, the reunion with God means the expansion of the soul until it is able once more to embrace the All.

  Hermann Hesse

  Mean, Soul, Expansion

  Hermann Hesse (1983). “Steppenwolf”, Bantam

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I write on a computer, but I've run the complete gambit. When I was very young, I wrote with a ballpoint pen in school notebooks. Then I got pretentious and started writing with a dip pen on parchment (I wrote at least a novel-length poem that way). Moved on to a fountain pen. Then a typewriter, then an electric self-correct. Then someone gave me a word processor and I was amazed at being able to fit ten pages on one of those floppy discs.

  Charles de Lint

  Notebook, Running, Writing

  4 Copy quote

• Lots of people today would never consider themselves guilty of idolatry as far as it is spelled out in the Ten Commandments, but by reducing God to some benevolent "man upstairs" whose only attributes are love and tolerance, and who could not care less about sin, they truly have transgressed God's commandment. They have created a god in their mind who does not actually exist and will on the day of judgment, not be able to offer them any help.

  Charlie Campbell

  Men, People, Tolerance

  6 Copy quote

• Growing up, I never accepted my curves, but when I got the opportunity to become a plus size model, I was able to appreciate my voluptuous body and love myself, not only on the outside, but on the inside.

  Hayley Hasselhoff

  Growing Up, Opportunity, Curves

  53 Copy quote

• I have left the obvious, essential fact to this point, namely, that it is the Russian Armies who have done the main work in tearing the guts out of the German army. In the air and on the oceans we could maintain our place, but there was no force in the world which could have been called into being, except after several more years, that would have been able to maul and break the German army unless it had been subjected to the terrible slaughter and manhandling that has fallen to it through the strength of the Russian Soviet Armies.

  Winston Churchill

  Ocean, Army, Air

  "War Situation". Speech in the House of Commons, api.parliament.uk. August 2, 1944.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The Great War differed from all ancient wars in the immense power of the combatants and their fearful agencies of destruction, and from all modern wars in the utter ruthlessness with which it was fought... Europe and large parts of Asia and Africa became one vast battlefield on which after years of struggle not armies but nations broke and ran. When all was over, Torture and Cannibalism were the only two expedients that the civilized, scientific, Christian States had been able to deny themselves: and they were of doubtful utility.

  Winston Churchill

  Christian, War, Struggle

  "The World Crisis, Volume I: 1911-1914". Book by Winston Churchill, 1923.

  10 Copy quote

  Show source